Communication is an essential tool for leading others and the Pathlight Inbox helps make communications with your team simpler. In this guide, we'll discuss the capabilities you have within your Inbox and how you can use these features to your advantage. 
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Inbox Tray
The Inbox Tray works similarly to many common email inboxes. You will find your Messages here and can have visibility specifically on Unread, Unacknowledged, Drafts, and Sent items. All Messages, regardless of their category (Coaching, Applause, Announcement) will appear in any of these folders.
You will also have visibility on any Activity within Pathlight. If there is a response to one of your messages, a new comment made on a 1-on-1, or a contest has ended you will find notifications of these events here (among others.)
Tasks within the Inbox allow you to view any duties that have been assigned to you, or that you may have assigned to others.
Pinned will give you the ability to pin a message to your team/group's homepage. It will remain there until you unpin the message. These are handy when policies or important updates need to be conveyed.
Team messages is available so you can see the exchange of messaging amongst your team members. Visibility here can ensure teams are staying focused on work matters and engaging professionally.
We will go through some of these capabilities in a bit more detail as we continue through the guide.
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Messages
Within the Messages section of your Inbox you have the ability to create a new message by choosing + Message. When creating new messages it's important to choose a category. Choosing a category to your message type will help when you view your Communication Score. Within your Inbox, you not only can view messages, but also Mini Goals and Contests.
- Applause messages are sent when recognizing a colleague's efforts and are indicated with a green thumbs up icon.
- Coaching messages meant to provide feedback around an employee's actions are indicated with a blue arrow.
- Announcement messages are meant to be sent out to multiple individuals, teams, or groups and are identified with a yellow megaphone icon.
- Mini Goals can also be sent here and viewed as a purple flag icon.
- Contests are designated by a purple trophy icon.
- If no category is chosen, you will see no icon next to the sender's profile picture.
Additionally, the Messages section of your Inbox give you the ability to mark all as read by clicking on the three dots next to the + Message button.
You can search your Messages by typing in a subject or person or filter your messages by category type.
One thing of note regarding your message functionality is that messages can be Edited/Deleted. If a message is Deleted, it will be removed from every individual's inbox that it was sent to, as if it were retracted. The only person who can Edit/Delete the message is the creator of the message, unless you choose to allow others to edit when creating your message. Once messages are deleted, they are not stored anywhere within the application, so you may need to contact support@pathlight.com to determine if your message is recoverable.
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Tasks
This section gives you clear access to any tasks that have been assigned to you or that you have assigned to another teammate. Tasks are typically assigned during 1-on-1 meetings where you and your direct reports have the ability to sync up on performance and discuss how to best support one another in team and individual development.
From this view you can Add a task (this can also be done within a 1-on-1 or from a message.) You have the ability to set the assignee (which can include multiple assignees for group tasks), set a due date and then monitor completion of these tasks. For instance, in the image above, Jeremy has assigned tasks to himself and these will appear near the top of his task list. He's also assigned tasks to Felicia and Holly. When any of these tasks are marked completed (by clicking the checkmark), they will be removed from the Tasks view and moved into Completed view.
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To learn more about Pinned messages, how to acknowledge a message, or other questions around your Inbox feel free to read on in the Help Center or reach out to support@pathlight.com.